Locke Setman

Locke, known as Loki in childhood and Set in adulthood, is the book’s central character. He is a painter who lives in modern-day San Francisco. He has achieved a great measure of professional success, but does not know who he really is and struggles to remain authentic despite the pressures of the commercial art world. More and more, he finds his art being dictated by the desires of critics and collectors rather than by his own internal vision. After receiving a cryptic telegram informing him of his grandmother’s death, he goes to the Kiowa reservation to find that the grandmother, Kope’mah, is already dead. There, he meets the young Kiowa-Navajo woman Grey, who gives him a medicine bundle that will eventually be the source of his transformation into the bear of Kiowa myth. Set’s mother died giving birth to him and his father...